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How Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS, Ever

broadcast.oreilly.com — O'Reilly Media recently interviewed Greg about his claim that the Linux kernel now supports more devices than any other operating system ever has, as well as why binary-only drivers are illegal, and how the kernel development process works.

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 1, 2008

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  • drlha, on 11/01/2008, -12/+73Yes, it supports far more 5 year old soundcards than Windows Vista does. The question is, does it support brand new ones?
  • daengbo, on 11/01/2008, -8/+57This is an amazing article about an entertaining subject. The driver situation is improving so quickly ....
  • ArthurSucks, on 11/01/2008, -7/+35They've come a long way. I don't own anything that is not supported.
  • ileftfark, on 11/01/2008, -5/+29So your argument is 'because my video driver doesn't currently work in Ubuntu 8.10, Linux cannot possibly support the largest number of hardware devices'? Really?
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -7/+30Depends, but more and more sound hardware is just onboard unless your job demands more. Some professional cards are supported by Linux, but I think you would need to purposely get hardware supported by Linux for the most part.
  • briLo, on 11/01/2008, -2/+21Both the best and worst thing about linux summed up in two words, hardware support!!
  • bumcheekcity, on 11/01/2008, -26/+44I dont give a rats ass if Linux supports a random soundcard from 15 years ago, I care if it supports, FULLY, new items I buy now, today. New Logitech webcam? No. My 7.1 surround sound Creative card? No. That random wireless card that I found in school and (amazingly, to be frank) has x64 Vista Drivers avaliable on the internet? No. And don't go blithering about ndiswrapper, it's useless.

    Great, it supports old hardware. That's true and inarguable. And it's not the fault of Linux that it doesn't support my new MX1000 mouse 100%, it's Logitech's fault. That's absolutely true. But what's most important is that I don't care whos fault it is or isn't. I want my mouse to work. End story.
  • RockSlice, on 11/01/2008, -10/+26Supporting "the most devices" isn't that important. Most of the devices are very specific hardware that are only for a select group of people.

    What's important is the % of mainstream devices that are supported. Linux still lags behind Windows in that regard.

    IMO, Linux won't be really ready until you can buy any peripheral you can find at an ordinary computer store, and not have to worry about whether there's a Linux driver for it.
  • offrdbandit, on 11/01/2008, -1/+14He's just mad that he has to reinstall his CoolWebSearch toolbar every time he runs his AV.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -1/+13Most devices in any particular category use the same electronics and chipsets. The chip manufacturers usually create a generic driver, which once compiled,will support any device using their chipset. The only real execption are the old win-modems, win-printers adn fake raid cards which offload most of their firmware to the host OS. Even in these areas, Linus has made major strides.

    Most linux distros have the ability to load driver modules and this ability to tell the os which driver to use for what devices means that pretty much any preipheral can be made to work with Linux.

    I think the more inportant questions is why is there a need for drivers in the first place, it is a legacy concept which serves no purpose. CF memory is so cheap now that each device can easily store all the needed information and code to tell any host OS how and what to do to configure the device.



  • Tollofsen, on 11/01/2008, -6/+18I find it to be the other way around. But them I'm probably biased as hell. Every time I help someone out with their computer there's a freaking driver hell. You slap in a windows xp sp3 install. But it doesn't support neither the w-lan or ethernet card. So I have to go online on computer #2 to find the freaking drivers, slap them over to a usb memory or a cd, then install the drivers on the machine with a fresh windows install on it. Just so I can spend what feels like a eternity on finding all the other drivers to the various devices online. Bearing in mind that there's no real way of checking what freaking hardware that's in the computer. And as soon as you install a sound driver you for some reason get about 400 sound mixer applications installed.

    The driver support in windows suck. Or well at least the default one. All the various vendors fix drivers on their own. But there's no one resource to get them all from. You have to know about one gazillion URLs to find them all. And no, none ever remembers where they keep the driver cd's that comes with the computer. And even if they do. Those drivers are ancient and straight up sucks in 11 out of 10 cases.

    The bias comes from not having used windows on my own computer since Windows ME(yeah that sucked and put me off). And I've probably just grown accustomed to not having to search around for stuff.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -1/+12Maybe you should be asking Creative that.
  • priegog, on 11/01/2008, -1/+11I'm sorry, but the title is not a lie. Linux DOES support MORE devices than anything else.
    You can argue whatever you want, and whine that your particularly shady video card is not perfectly supported, but that doesn't make the previous fact any less truthfull. I'll offer you a challenge: Go and install XP (or Vista, for god's sake), don't use the provided drivers CD, and see how that goes. What's that you say?
    Oh, and if I might add, if it was working on Hardy, then it is hardly "not-supported". It might just need some tweaking.
    Do you even know what the word fallacy means? sorry, I got sidetracked...
    And honestly, in THIS particular subject I think you couldn't be more wrong on the community's attitude. We all know drivers are probably the main thing holding linux back, even if it is the manufacturers' fault.
    So just, you know, take a deep breath, and think a little about the things that bother you before coming and writing stupid, long, and senseless rants like that.
  • asdfgafawer3, on 11/01/2008, -3/+13Doesn't support mine :(
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -2/+11You mean, they just got _first-party_ drivers for it a week ago. b43 and bcm43xx have been out for a long time and work perfectly
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -1/+9I don't know. My wireless worked right out the box when I bought my laptop. It was about four months old.

    I run it on four computers, and every device is supported. A little hardware manager popped up and asked me to download drivers, and sure enough - all works.

  • ileftfark, on 11/01/2008, -1/+9Troll Score: 2/10
  • jnuffnuffnomnom, on 11/01/2008, -0/+8Dad?
  • 3leggedHorse, on 11/01/2008, -0/+8Shame Intrepid still has flaky USB connection Hardy had. Starts at 20MB a sec then after about a min its down to 2-3 if you are lucky.
  • jnuffnuffnomnom, on 11/01/2008, -0/+8I enjoyed reading your comment and the time I took out of my life to read it and type this.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -4/+12*sigh* Contact the vendors or use Cedega or Crossover Office or Wine. See, the difference between Linux and Windows is that with Linux you have CHOICE. If you use Windows, MS force feeds you THE way to use your system.
  • twystoffate, on 11/01/2008, -0/+7You're right. For every piece of hardware designed to run under Windows, there is a driver. But let us not forget all the hardware designed to run under OSX and Linux. The drivers are out there for a lot more than just Windows boxes, which puts the device support number well above that of Windows.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -1/+8When it comes to sound cards the best thing is to search for brand new ones already supported, you'll find some. And at the same time you support those manufacturers that took the time to make it (or helped to, most of the times not getting in the way of FLOSS developers is just enough) compatible.
  • atgmac, on 11/01/2008, -1/+8"WINE: Wine Is Not an Emulator"
  • tech42er, on 11/01/2008, -0/+74/10

    Block the category, you prick.
  • Peterix, on 11/01/2008, -1/+8PROTIP: X-fi is second-grade crap card with extremely poor drivers no matter which OS you happen to use.
  • offrdbandit, on 11/01/2008, -0/+7"It is standardized to a degree but certain aspects cannot be standardized because vendors intentionally make their devices unique. If their devices did not operate fundamentally differently, they would be looking at lawsuit hell. You add support for wifi and standard wifi protocols are added to the kernel (802.11a-g), but in order to actually interface with the hardware you need the hardware drivers. It's exactly the same with windows and every other OS."

    I understand how drivers work. My point was, device interaction should be treated like processor interaction - with defined architectures that the same software will operate on multiple hardware vendors' products. x86 is x86 whether its an AMD, Intel, or other chip. The chips operate differently, but the differences are transparent to the software. Device chipsets should be the same way.

    "If you wanted, you *could* put controller interface code all into one driver but they would be hard to maintain and every time you loaded support for one card, you would be wasting extra memory to support 20 other devices you don't even have."

    This is not what I mean at all. The one "super driver" would be one driver and require the overhead of one currently existing driver, but all devices constructed in compliance to the driver's architecture would function.

    My point was, driver support should not be about aggregating a library of drivers for all known device, but rather aggregating device chipsets under one (or a few) software drivers.
  • nourkah, on 11/01/2008, -6/+13Broadcom wireless for laptops has been one of the most widely used cards for a while now, and they just got drivers for it a week or two ago. I'm all for Linux, but these ads are deceiving. In a lot of situations it's just not where it needs to be for mainstream use.
  • FLarsen, on 11/01/2008, -2/+9You seem angry somehow.
  • Orbity, on 11/01/2008, -9/+15Great read. I enjoyed the time I took out of my life to read it.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -2/+8Yes and no. Part of the problem is that:
    A) Vendors are slow with the drivers
    B) Vendors may NEVER make a driver and that means the community has to design one. So it takes about six months.

    The moral of the story is to find supported hardware and use that.

    I suggest starting at:
    http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -2/+8It's an interview to a SUSE developer. Did you at least read the article or just ctrl+Fed the word ubuntu?
  • smotpoker, on 11/01/2008, -0/+6Linux can be an OS, depending on context. Didn't we debate this already?

    http://www.linux.org/ - "Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux - "Linux (commonly pronounced IPA: /ˈlɪnəks/ in English; variants exist[1]) is a Unix-like computer operating system family which uses the Linux kernel."

    http://www.linux.com/whatislinux/119700 - "Linux (pronounced LIH-nuks) is an operating system for computers, comparable to Windows or Mac OS X. It was originally created starting in 1991 by Finnish programmer Linus (pronounced LEE-nus) Torvalds with the assistance of developers from around the globe."

    First 3 results from googling Linux. I am also fairly active in the FOSS community and have had this debate before. Saying "Linux is not an OS" is like saying "windows is not an OS". They are both collections of OSes which are referred to generically and specifically by a single name. Just because the Linux kernel has the same name doesn't mean people cannot refer to the OS or collection of OSes by it.
  • nuxx, on 11/01/2008, -20/+26y'know what's funny about this? I love Linux, I really do...but I just got done with the upgrade to Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, and it broke my video drivers. See, I'm using a VIA UniChrome Pro Onboard Video chipset...and well, VIA's track record with the Linux/Open Source community ain't exactly stellar. So saying Linux supports more devices than any other OS is a fallacy, and people who spout off emphatic, overblown claims such as this, only reenforce the stereotype that the Linux user community are a bunch of half-mad zealots who run about with rose-coloured glasses on and will respond to anyone claiming that there is superior support for X on another OS by running away with their ears plugged, screaming "LA LA LA LA!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!! LINUX RULEZ!!!"

    I believe that this sort of behavior, in turn, also affects the community itself because from my perspective, it creates a sort of situation where mob mentality takes over and people REALLY start to believe that "yes, Linux supports EVERYTHING, it's magical and is better than anything else, we don't know why it is...it just is." and when that sort of mentality sets in, it becomes counterproductive. Problems don't get solved because they end up being ignored or shuffled off as unimportant or trivial.

    So please, don't make grandiose claims like this, it makes you look like a fool, and isn't doing a damn thing for the Open Source scene and/or Linux-based projects other than to stunt said projects' growth rate.
  • JammoBlammo, on 11/01/2008, -5/+10I enjoyed your mom last night.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5Agreed, but good luck getting the vendors to buy into that ;-)
  • wyleyrabbit, on 11/01/2008, -3/+8My problem with this article is in the very first response: "...independently verified by somebody from Microsoft." Come on. "somebody at Microsoft"?!? Who? The receptionist? The Janitor? The guy that puts the tape on the boxes in the shipping department? It's precisely vague non-information like this that hurts the linux / open source cause. Fan-boys can get excited with statements like this, but not the rest of us.

    Other than that, interesting article. In my recent experience with Ubuntu, most things worked although many required much pain and suffering to get working, and some never really worked properly. Saying that linux "supports" a device needs further explanation. Some things required nightmarish steps to get working (installing support for certain multi-function printers, for example), while in other ways the support was far from complete with barely passable functionality. Could my parents get something as simple as the Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000 that's on my system working in Linux? Not a chance? Did I? Partially, but only after almost an hour reading, researching, getting help in IRC, etc...and even after all that, it wouldn't work in Skype. My DVD-RW drive never did work properly in Linux. Yes, I submitted bug reports, several back and forths with key developers, I was told, "sorry there's no workaround, maybe next version" yet the drive works flawlessly in Vista.

    I'm done. My eight month experiment of making my living on a linux workstation is over. I'm back on Windows (Vista64). Everything just works. Painlessly. I'm not going back to linux. Not this decade. Maybe in 5 years. I dunno. My issue is with applications. There are many applications I simply need to do my job, those being Photoshop, Word, Excel, a good desktop publishing application, etc. No, the Gimp does not replace Photoshop, and no, OpenOffice.org does not replace Microsoft Office. Vista has proven to be extremely stable, and I would argue has crashed far less on the same hardware as linux. And of my dozens of hardware devices, they all work fine with the exception of an old Fujitsu Scansnap that only has 32-bit drivers (so I have that hooked up to a windows 32-bit machine).

    Bottom line: I love open source software. I love Linux for servers. I will continue using Windows on the desktop--it's about productivity.
  • DyceFreak, on 11/01/2008, -8/+13kudos to you, I cant even boot a live CD because my NForce4/Geforce is unsupported aparently. Just get artifacts all over the screen and im too lazy to go through a page or two of fixes. All I hear is "the device support in linux is fine now, hardly any problems." so I stick in my live CD fire it up and get a hugely artifacted screen even with vga=771 and noacpi and such... im still waiting for linux to prove to me it can work.
  • smotpoker, on 11/01/2008, -6/+11They already have both. If you want identical software/games, contact your vendors and tell them to port them and they will have at least one more customer if they do; otherwise you have to settle for the thousands provided for free.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5There's no way Ubuntu would change anything on your router. It uses your router; your router does not use Ubuntu.

    Sounds like your router is bonkered. Only thing I could think of is if maybe some program you're running on Ubuntu used UDP to take a port that XBL uses. And even then, I highly doubt that. Any program on ANY OS could do that though.
  • smotpoker, on 11/01/2008, -1/+6FTA:

    "i went and asked every single hardware manufacturer, the big guys that ship the boxes, Dell, IBM, HP--what do you ship that isn't supported by Linux? They came back with nothing. Everything is supported by Linux. If you have a device that isn't supported by Linux that's being shipped today, let me know."

    Linux hardware support is and has been snowballing for years. Every year the time it takes for new devices to be added shrinks and more companies are providing their own drivers or letting others create them. Since I started using Linux, the likelihood of 3 devices being unsupported has dropped to like .5 and instead of 1-2 years for new drivers we are having to wait like 0-6 months after device release.

    I'd guess that if you were to randomly pick out a system or a device from any major hardware store, there is about 90% chance it would be supported. If you only pick from devices released within the year, about 75-85%. (all numbers in previous 2 paragraphs are guesstimates based on personal experiences).

    I know a lot of people seem to want 100% but c'mon... considerable majority with way small budget, little help and 3-4% market share? You have to admit that is a feat and a half...and i don't see how it could get that much better without a bigger market :(
  • Jem7vwh, on 11/01/2008, -1/+6Doesn't support toshiba sound driver for the thablet laptop.
  • Naieve, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5ati tv wonder 550
    Acer laptop with weird cpu fan requiring special drivers

    I cant use linux on either of the machines I wouldn't mind using it on, and I'm not buying a new tv card because XP works just fine...
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5Equally ironic is the fact that I had to bury TCKC2C by his own logic.
  • haterofps3, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5That makes no sense to me but it might be my perspective

    How is it linux's fault that Live isn't working for you? Please don't take offense its just that your statement of distress seems far fetched.
  • rayray14, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5I agree, there was no heart in his trolling; crazy kids are just lazy these days.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -2/+7Windows Vista doesn't support your sound card, your sound card vendor does. If there aren't Linux drivers, then they're primarily the one's to blame.
  • Darkhacker, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5Finding one counter example doesn't mean the claim is inaccurate. If there are a thousand hardware devices and Linux supports 800 of them while Windows supports 500, Linux still supports the most hardware but you happen to have one of the devices that's only supported by Windows. It doesn't make the original claim false though.
  • inactive, on 11/01/2008, -0/+5If you read the article, you'd know that that Greg Kroah-Hartman (the guy being interviewed) has been going around to all of the manufacturers and is getting overwhelming support on his initiative to support everything. Driver support has tripled in the past year, and a lot of that is NEW HARDWARE.

    You read first, then you comment.
  • LingNoi, on 11/01/2008, -1/+6Supports my Logitech Quickcam pro 9000, I have been using it with skype linux for 2 years now so I don't understand your "does it support my logitech camera" question.

    In fact I'd bet you didn't even check before posting.
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